Unbreakable begins and ends with two of the worst title cards in film history. One of them plants an unnecessary seed in the minds of the audience and the second just insults them. And that’s unfortunate because M. Night Shyamalan’s follow-up to his vastly overrated The Sixth Sense has something going for it that few films released these days have – originality. Shyamalan just doesn’t know how to wield it. My best advice is for you to cover your eyes after the Touchstone Pictures logo appears and hope nobody feels the need to read out loud. Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do to save you from the second one.

Getting off on the right track we see security guard David Dunn (Bruce Willis) getting onto the wrong track. In some freak of nature, his train derails killing over 120 passengers yet leaving David to walk away without a scratch. His wife, Audrey (Robin Wright Penn) and son, Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark) are understandably happy to see him alive, yet have been going through their own tough times together. Enter Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), an independent “art” gallery owner with a mysterious disease known as osteogensis imperfecta, which renders his bones so brittle that a mere knock could snap them like a twig. Elijah seeks out David as the potential answer to his dreams and offers an interesting explanation for his survival.

To discuss Unbreakable any further from there would only ruin what isn’t ruined by the film’s opening title card. It then becomes impossible to make any critical analysis of where this film goes wrong. So I advise those still waiting to see the film to tread carefully if they don’t want to know anymore then what has been revealed in the film’s ads.

For the first hour, Unbreakable moves along on the strength of unpredictability. Our desire to discover the truth behind David’s invincibility enliven the kind of pace that would put the sleepy to rest. But when we find ourselves getting ahead of what Shyamalan wants us to know, its very easy to start getting frustrated. Perhaps the build-up sets itself up for something so spectacular, that any kind of conclusion would turn out to be a disappointment. But the best endings don’t make us wish for more in a sequel, they deliver in its own running time without the words “part two” ever becoming a factor.

The letdown begins when David gets his own sixth sense, a Christopher Walken-like trait of being able to not see where people are going to do, but what they have already done. Forget the boredom of repetitiveness when this story deserves better, but why does David develop this skill all of a sudden. Awakened by the trauma of the train wreck? Releasing the powers he’s been repressing all these years? How come he wasn’t aware of it after the car accident he lived through in his younger and more vulnerable years?

Shyamalan isn’t that good a storyteller to restrict a viewer from asking such questions during the proceedings. Even the 99.9th percentile that got fooled by The Sixth Sense should have wondered why a floating briefcase wasn’t noticed by people as Malcolm walked down the street especially since it was shown that ghosts could move objects still seen by humans, i.e. the little girl and her boxed videotape. Or how about why Malcolm never had to go to the bathroom or eat or talk to anybody in the time that he was shot to “THE NEXT FALL”!!!

Many of the same elements that made up The Sixth Sense are present here. You’ve got the character somewhat tortured by having a unique gift. There’s the one available to help that person realize their powers. Breakdowns in communication exist between the gifted and his family and like with the 10th highest grossing film of all time (as of 1999), Shyamalan blows his wad too early. Somebody needs to teach this guy the filmmaking equivalent of Tantra. Title cards aside, he even has one character describe a book by saying “this one has a surprise ending.” Hardy har har, but is it a playful joke about the ending that fooled way too many people in 1999 or another example of misguided foreshadowing.

My hatred of The Sixth Sense may be easy to bleed over into the filmmaker’s next effort. But by going into every film with an open mind, I allow myself the position of giving the film a fair chance and a solid first hour staring down at me, things were going better than even I could have hoped. But that first hour doesn’t become part of the solution therefore becoming part of the problem. It’s occasionally nice to see a filmmaker throw the three-act structure out the window and create a filmgoing experience that can border on religious. Unbreakable is not that film, primarily because it needs structure and it doesn’t have it. Like with Sixth Sense, Shyamalan writes and directs a 60-minute first act, a 40-minute second act and a 5-minute third act. Plot and character development are one thing, but if you can’t build up any significant emotions through them, you’re just wasting time. The ending to Unbreakable is as abrupt as any film conclusion you’ll ever see and its made all the worse because its precisely where the third act should be beginning. Instead, we get a title card that wraps it all up in 20 words or less.

A colleague of mine described the final title card as a punchline. I like to think of it as just a punch…in the face of its audience. Just when the film seems primed to take off, Shyamalan stops the movie with the soulless glee of a court jester, screaming “HA! I GOTCHA AGAIN!” and then running before he’s beaten by the angry mob. Also, think of the implications when you tie the opening and closing title cards together. If you’re intrigued, perhaps I’m not doing my job.

Yet Unbreakable is an intriguing film…to a point. If you’re able to stick with it, you’ll no doubt be discussing it on the way home, realizing only then that it is very good. What is good are the performances. Bruce Willis can subtly underplay these parts in his sleep by now and Samuel L. Jackson may actually be cooler here than he was in Shaft. Even Robin Wright Penn gets a lot of mileage out of an underwritten part as the wife. Spencer Treat Clark, however, will have you begging for Haley Joel Osment who could have given the scenes between David and his son more heart and believability. But with the good comes the bad, including many laughable moments like the final title card (have I driven that point home yet?) and Jackson negotiating some stairs. The worst comes at that fateful hour mark which comes equipped with the most disturbing scene I’ve witnessed in sometime; one that’s shoddily written and given the wrong approach completely. You’ll know as soon as you see it and it will take you right out of the movie.

Bottom line, is Unbreakable a bad film? Not necessarily. It has a great unique premise and many good scenes along the way. It’s better than The Sixth Sense, yet given my reputation regarding that overrated exercise in audience trickery, that’s not saying much. Shyamalan (or “Night” as he as commonly referred to) seems to know all the ambient factors of how to create an audience pleasing entertainment, just not how to bring them together. And his reliance on opening & closing “explanations” rob anyone who is paying attention to details and not just the big picture. It took Shyamalan five drafts to come up with his ending for The Sixth Sense and I guessed it in 20 minutes on opening night, devoid of any knowledge of a surprise ending. I didn’t quite pick out the ending here, partly because its not, or should not be, an ending at all. Five drafts for The Sixth Sense. He could have used a few more on Unbreakable.
(NOTE: I’m also tired of Shyamalan post-predicting has career moves. In interviews for The Sixth Sense he kept saying “I’m going to write a movie called The Sixth Sense, I’m going to sell it for two million dollars and Bruce Willis is going to star in it. In the press kit for Unbreakable, Shyamalan is quoted as saying “before I wrote it, I conceived the whole movie in my head. I said I want to do it with Touchstone Pictures. I want Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson to play the leads and I want it to come out at Thanksgiving.” It’s nice to see such creative freedom come from such a hack. Hey Night, shut up and go learn how to write a script and direct it.)